The Problem with Block Transfer Mathematics
by GroovyKat
Summary: Ten-year-old Gallifrey Tyler gets himself into a situation at the Academy on New-Gallifrey that hurtles both he and his little sister across all time and space to land at the feet of their father in his Sixth incarnation. A Sixth Doctor adventure and part of the "Family Adventures" verse that follows from the fic "Just a Human"
1. Babes in the Woods

A/N: It's been a rather long while since I've wandered into the world of fanfiction. I'd like to have a great reason for it and say that Real Life took a baseball bat to me and disallowed any form of creativity at all ... but the truth of it is that I just completely lost my will to write.

I blame two things for that:  
One: That I quit smoking. Cold Turkey. Because my son rather indignantly told me that I wouldn't be able to ... Something completely competitive within me roared to life at that point and in my attempt to prove my adorable little Time Lord wrong, I did it... And let me tell you ... it sucks the life right out of you .. what a horrendously disgusting endeavour it is to quit! "Quit smoking and you'll feel so much better for it" ... Bull shit to that... I don't think I've ever felt more physically revolting than I did through that period of time ... Still. It's done now. Still not halfway back to normal, but I'm assured it gets better as time goes on.  
Two: I stopped writing for me and took far too many "pressures from critiques" from others and stopped writing what it was that I wanted to write in order to "not offend" or follow someone else's mindset. Never a good idea to change your entire story at someone else's whim. That kills the creative flow ... That isn't to say I don't want to hear from people .. just that I won't be straying too far from my original storyline because one or two people don't like where it's headed... I'll make continuity changes and the such, but my story is my story. Suggest away (and really I do like them), but please don't pressure a change.  
That said ... I'm writing a new to get myself back into the writing groove and will go back over the WIP's to put them back on to my original track ... that means a couple of them will get more than a handful of chapters tossed into the bin.  
If you're still with me, please bear with it as I manhandle what I've got and wrestle it into something recognizable to my original idea.

For now .. please accept this new offering as just a bit of fun that will get me back into the swing of fanfic writing again

Oh, and I don't own Doctor Who ... none of it ... nothing except a myriad of merchandise I've spent way too much money on over the years...

~~oooOOOooo~~

Dried leaves and twigs crunched and cracked underneath the thick and sturdy soles of his boots as he haphazardly tried to navigate his way through the rough and unfamiliar thicket of an unknown planet. He tried hard to ignore the terrified yips and howls of the tiny young girl stumbling helplessly at his side. He kept his hand clasped tightly around hers as he tugged the two of them toward an unknown destination that he hoped was going to be safe.

Oh, what had happened? What in the name of Rassilon's ghost had happened to end them both up here?

It was supposed to be a routine lecture at the Dimensionally Transcendental Cradles at the shipyard. That's all. Just a lecture on the Block Transfer Equations and the effect of the Transfer on the growth of a Time Capsule. Or, as his professor Salruthaklerthu preferred to call them, "Time Events". Whatever they were called - _Time Capsule_ or _Time Event_ \- there weren't supposed to be any in any of the cradles. No, there weren't! As far as they all knew, there weren't any TARDISes-to-be anywhere near mature enough to be considered ready for block transfer back in the Hyper Looms; how was there a stray one in a cradle nursery that had a class full of curious Time Lords and Ladies to be?

…Someone was going to have to answer to that rather spectacular oversight.

There was a hiccup from just slightly behind him, and then a squeal as the tiny little hand tugged roughly and then slid out of his. The slide of her hand was rather swiftly followed by a thump and then a shrill and piercing cry.

"Oh Tia," Gallifrey cooed with gentle urgency as he dropped to his knees in the dirt and tended to his tiny sister. "Don't cry." He curled his arms around her shoulders and pulled her in against his tunic-covered chest. He couldn't hide the pleading in his voice. "Oh, pleasepleaseplease don't cry. There's no need to cry. Not with me, Tia. Not when you're with your big brother."

Tia continued to wail against his chest. "I want Daddy."

Gallifrey slumped just slightly. Usually Tia was all about her big brother and followed him around like a curious little nuk-nuk-sucking shadow who would pop up with a squeal or giggle around her pacifier at the most random times – usually scaring the time out of him before erupting into brilliant laughter at his startled and somewhat un-Time-Lord like squeak of surprise.

She rarely did openly show preference to her mum or dad when in Gallifrey's presence. She'd only do that in the moments when she was very scared, had a boo-boo, was hungry, or wasn't feeling well. Depending on just which one of her parents she asked for, Gallifrey could immediately tell just what was wrong. Calling for their dad, well, that meant she was scared – properly scared.

And if she was scared enough to wail for their dad, then that fear was going to pass along the parental link and both his mum and dad would sense it and then find out that he had messed up…

…And messed up big.

He couldn't let that happen. He was the _responsible big brother_. He couldn't let this little oops (okay, a BIG oops) disappoint his parents and let them know that he wasn't as responsible as they thought him to be…

…Or let them know that he'd snuck Tia out of the house to take her to the Academy with him for the day…

He quickly rocked his little sister and cooed a gentle shushing sound.

"Don't cry little tafelshew," he urged gently. "We're just having a wee adventure, you and me. That's all. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all."

Tia snuffled wetly as she used the collar of his tunic to wipe her nose. She then petted clumsily at her chest in search of the ribbon that pinned her pacifier to her frilly pink t-shirt. "Adventure, Gal?" she asked softly.

He nodded his head eagerly, not bothering to shield the relief from his voice and posture. "That's right, an adventure! You and me. Like Mum and Dad, only you're _my_ little companion, yeah?" He grinned widely down at her. "Gallifrey and Tia: adventurers through all time and space. Taking after the king and queen of misadventure themselves."

Tia rocked backward to settle her diapered backside onto her heels and nodded with determination. She continued to pet at her chest in search of her tethered pacifier. "In TARDIS?"

Gallifrey winced just a little and rubbed at the back of his neck as he took a quick look around them. "The TARDIS. Well-ll-ll." He was still high on his knees in the dirt in front of her, and lowered himself to settle down onto his heels. He huffed out his breath as he took in their surroundings. "No TARDIS, Tafelshrew, but…"

She hiccupped a shocked and suddenly frightened gasp.

Gallifrey rose to his knees once more and raised both hands to urgently placate her with hurried assurances. "But that's not a big deal for a Time Lord and Lady, Tia. No big deal at all." He tapped at his temple with his fingertip. "See. We have these big Gallifreyan brains inside our heads. That makes us clever. Oh, so clever."

Tia blinked rapidly to clear her sight and looked at her big brother with wide eyes. "Clever," she echoed in a voice filled with awe.

"That's right," Gallifrey continued eagerly. "We're both like Dad, you know. Brilliant. Impressive, even. We'll be at home in no time and then I'll sneak you past Innocet and into Daddy's study where you can take a nap on that big cushy bean bag that he got from Trezalork-7. You know the one, right? The one that's all furry and vibrates while making a purring sound when you get it in just the right spot." He paused to consider that a moment. "I hope that doesn't mean that it's sentient. You know with the purring thing. Cause that might be a little ew, yeah? I mean. Imagine if you got too comfortable to want to get up and you had to fart or something…."

Tia started to giggle when Gallifrey punctuated his thoughts by blowing a raspberry around his tongue and through his lips. She clapped her hands gleefully. "Again, Gal. Again!"

"Though if it was, I reckon Dad would've us know, yeah?" he continued quietly with his eyes raised high to the sky above his head. "Be kinda rude if he didn't. Rude to the beanbag, and rude to us. Yeah?" He folded his arms across his chest and sniffed indignantly. "Not gonna sit on that thing anymore, let me tell you. Nope. Lots of nopes on that."

"Gal," Tia whined in such a way to threaten him with an all-out tantrum if he didn't immediately stop, look, and listen. "Again…"

Gallifrey slid his eyes toward his sister. One brow arched itself high into his fringe. "What?"

Tia stuck out her tongue and tried her best to blow a raspberry like Gallifrey had. Her eyes crossed so that she could look down as she tried again and failed to replicate the sound. She let out a short whimper of defeat and looked to her brother with wide and defeated eyes. "Can't…"

"Is this what you're trying to do, Tafelshrew?" Gallifrey dipped his head toward her and repeated the sound whilst he crossed his eyes in a playful pull in his face.

Tia nodded and erupted into excited, brilliant laughter.

Gallifrey prepared to repeat his actions again if only to hear his sister's thrilled little peals of laughter, but was held silent at the crack of a twig in the near distance. Quickly he shuffled toward his sister and shushed her as he covered her mouth with his hand.

"Shhh, Tia," he hissed when she whimpered and struggled in his grasp. "Keep still."

Her whimper became a wet moan against his hand.

"Tia please," he demanded harshly as he struggled to keep hold of her squirming little frame. "Be quiet. Danger."

That six letter word had the little girl still quickly in his hold. Still though she was, the word gave her a pang of fear and her eyes quickly filled with frightened tears. "D-daddy?"

He felt the tremor in her tiny little body, her quickened breathing, and Gallifrey quickly realized that he was about to lose the battle to keep her quiet. "No, Tia. Please don't get upset. Gal will keep you safe, yeah? Safe like Daddy does." He briefly considered singing his father's Gallifreyan nursery rhyme in an attempt to keep her calm, but he really didn't know all the words of it, yet, and he didn't have the warm timbre in his voice that the Doctor did. He knew it would be for naught if he tried.

One little hiccup became two, and fairly quickly it became a series of little hitched coughs and broken exhales that turned into frightened sobs.

The battle was officially lost. Gallifrey switched from trying to hold her firm and quiet to frantically trying to pop her pacifier in between her lips. With her mouth wide open with a sob and a wail, however, the usually pacifying Nuk Nuk kept falling straight out of her mouth and against her pink onesie top.

"Tia," he demanded with impatient frustration. "Come on. Don't be like this. Do you wanna get us in trouble? Huh? There could be bears or monsters or anything here that want to eat us and you carrying on like a flubble on heat is only gonna bring them here. Is that what you want? Is it?"

Her eyes widened and she wailed yet louder. "Daddy-y-y-y-y."

Her distress was enough that even _he_ felt it through their familial bond. And if _he_ could feel it, then for sure that no matter where in time and space _they_ were, their father was going to feel it back on New-Gallifrey.

…Oh. He was going to be in so much trouble.

A loud crack of a breaking branch and hurried rustling of fallen leaves drawing ever closer to them alerted him to an even greater danger, and yet Gallifrey actually found himself rather swiftly mentally scrolling through a list of pros and cons to alerting his father via Security Protocol Gal-1 versus facing the beast on approach.

He heard a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a growl and the internal battle ceased immediately. He snatched his old cellphone from his pocket, buried his tongue into the very side of his mouth and began furiously tapping at the screen.

"It's okay, Tia," he assured her as gently as he could given that his hearts were racing up into his throat. "M'calling Dad."

Tia wailed at his side and clutched wet little hands against the sleeve of his upper arm to pull herself to her feet.

"Callin' more'n one, actually," he bit out quickly. "You want dad, I'll give you thirteen of him. _Thirteen_ , Tia! How exciting is that? Just please _please_ be quiet."

He winced at the unresponsiveness of his outdated phone and slapped the face of it against his palm. "Come on, you archaic piece of crap. Don't die on me now."

Branches opened up violently in the brush just ahead of them, and a thick, portly body clad in a rainbow of colours burst out through the thicket.

"Who dares threaten the child of a Time Lord?" he bellowed darkly as his broad and multi-coloured shoulders rose and then fell into an aggressive hunch. "Show yourself if you dare. Take on an opponent your own size!"

Gallifrey heard the growl and the aggression much more than he registered any of the words spoken by the intruder. He let up a sharp yip of startled fright and threw his phone off to one side. He instinctively curled himself around his sister and shuffled them both backward across the dirt and up against the thick trunk of a nearby tree.

"B-Back off," he growled out in as threatening a tone as he could muster with a throat full of two furiously heating hearts. He gulped thickly as he looked up into a pair of dirty green eyes that were flared wild and frantic. "M'warning you. I'm a lot tougher than I look."

Half hidden under a curled blonde fringe, the furiousness within them shifted slightly into concern. The concern quickly melted away to confusion. "Gal? Why are you…?"

"I mean it," Gallifrey threatened again as he kicked his feet in the twigs, leaves and dirt around them in an attempt to press himself harder against the tree behind him. "M'not gonna go easy. You better know that. And you also better know that messin' with me and my sister means that you're messing with my dad." He panted a little and held tighter to Tia, who had begun struggling in earnest as she reached out toward the man and called for her father.

"And you don't wanna mess with my dad," Gallifrey continued in a tone that was strangled from trying to corral his sister. "Cos. Cos my Dad. My dad…."

"Your dad is right _here_ ," the man said softly. He smiled a grin of encouragement as he held out his hands in a placating manner and slowly lowered himself into a crouch. "Gallifrey. It's me. The Doctor. Your father."

Gallifrey gulped down his hope and looked the man over with a critical and disbelieving eye. "How do I know it's you and not just some bad guy who wants a piece of my dad?" he questioned in a far more confidently threatening voice as he let his eyes rake over the multi-coloured jacket, yellow and black pinstriped trousers and a blue and white polka-dotted necktie tied into a loose bow.

He had to snort out a chuckle. "Nah. No need. I'd recognize that terrible dress sense anywhere – and I'm not gonna soon forget that horrendous jacket." A grin spread across his cheeks. "Like. _Really_?"

The Doctor flicked a brow and looked down along the sleeve of his right arm. He tried to shield the indignance from his voice, but failed somewhat. "There is nothing _wrong_ with this jacket, my boy. Why on some planets it's the absolute pinnacle of taste and style."

"Name me one planet, Dad. Just one." He peeped as Tia finally shot out of his protective hold and torpedoed herself into the Doctor's chest with a wail of his name. "And of course, little Tafelshrew there throwing herself at you kind've eliminates any further doubt toward your true identity."

The Doctor let out a small yelp at the brunette comet that collided with his chest, but he smiled as he curled his arms around her tiny body and drew himself to a stand. "Her name is _Tafelshrew_?"

Gallifrey shrugged as he stumbled forward in his own attempt at standing. "Nah. It's Tialathilialungbarrowmas, or Tia for short." He staggered to his feet and wiped the dust and brush from his trousers. "Dad and me. Well. You and me, we call her Tafelshrew." He grinned as his sister. "Cause she's a sneaky little mouse that is so adorably edible…"

"Ahh," he breathed through an open mouth of recognition. "So _this_ is my eldest girl, then." He gave her a warm and toothy smile. "My precious and sometimes quite precocious Tialathilia. My sweet child, I've heard quite a few tales about you from both your brother and your mum, but this is the first moment I've had to actually meet you. How are you, darling – other than quite edible?"

"You no eat me," Tia slurred in reply around the pacifier that she had finally shoved into her mouth with the power of both hands. She grinned up at her father with crinkled eyes and chubby cheeks. "But now I'm hungry daddy. Dinner time yet?"

He blinked once and opened his eyes wide at his tiny daughter's request. "Well. Yes. I think I can scrummage up something for you and young Gallifrey to eat back at the TARDIS." He looked to his son and then lifted his eyes to the thicket behind the young lad. "Let's just wait for your mother, shall we?"

Gallifrey's eyes flared with guilt. He dropped his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Uhm. Mum's not coming."

"Pardon me?"

Gallifrey lifted his head only enough to be able to look guiltily through his brows toward his father. "We might've gotten lost, me and Tia. And not just a little bit lost like we wandered off at the market or anythin' like that. No. More accurate would be saying that we got on a wrong transport of something and are lost somewhere across time and space from…"

"Hold on," the Doctor barked with disbelief. "Are you saying that you are separated by space _and_ time from your mother and I?"

"Well-l-l-l," Gallifrey sang with a forced laugh. " _You're_ here, so we're not quite separated from you …"

"By a few regenerations you are, young man."

Gallifrey nodded his head and rolled his eyes. "That's all semantics, yeah? You can always set a thing on the TARDIS to activate at the right time to tell you and mum where me and Tia ended up. No biggie. Easy peasy, yeah?"

"It is, indeed, a _biggie_ ," the Doctor countered sharply. "What level of mischief did your mother and I allow you to get into in order to become separated in this manner?"

"Mum'n Dad had nothing to do with it," Gallifrey snapped in reply. "Dad. I mean _You_ are all holed up in some council meeting about – oh I dunno – something that's probably boring you absolutely senseless, which," he added with an accusing point of his finger into his father's chest. "Which is always far more dangerous than anything I can come up with on a good day, let me tell you."

The Doctor snorted a suppressed laugh, but didn't argue.

Gallifrey continued to speak without really taking a breath. "Course, Mum's worse, you know. And I just know she's up to something nefarious with Auntie Leela and Romana – _you bet she is_ – the three of them are right terrors when they get together."

The Doctor's head dropped backward as he let out a laugh of total and complete agreement. "As I learned for myself when I was in my fifth incarnation."

Gallifrey's face straightened out in surprise and his eyes widened with thrill. "Hold on. Are you suggesting that we had an adventure when you were in your fifth?"

The Doctor grinned. "Indeed we did, my boy. You, your mother, Leela, Romana and Brax pulled me out from quite the sticky situation, but not before you all put me in there in the first place. Now," he continued with a wink and a smile. "Your mother, Leela, Romana and even yourself I can understand. It's in your very nature to be mischevious. But Braxiatel?" He shook his head with a smile. "Not sure if I'd call your influence on him positive or negative…"

"Positive," Gallifrey yipped excitedly. "The Lungbarrow lads are a pure positive force of nature…."

"…Though just how your mother got Braxiatel in a dress and heels, I have no idea."

Oh," Gallifrey yipped excitedly as his feet bounced in the dirt. "Sounds like so much fun! I can't wait. Oh. How long do I have to wait, Dad? How long?"

The Doctor tapped at the side of his nose. "A Time Lord never tells," he answered with a wink. "And besides, my boy. You're here with me now, and I'm sure that adventure waits for us now as it always does."

The bounce became a dance that had Tia giggling and clapping along with Gallifrey's movements. "I am so excited! So much better than boring lectures on Hexadecimal Notations of Block Transfer Mathematics at the Academy. Right, Tafelshrew?"

"There is nothing boring about Block Transfer mathematics, young man," the Doctor countered sternly only a moment before his entire face lit up. "Oh, hold on. You are at the Academy? Oh, my boy! That's wonderful, terrific news."

"Yeah," Gallifrey huffed out. "Terrific until you find out that it was because of an accident at the academy that led to me and Tia getting sent out across time and space and fearing for our lives."

The Doctor looked first at his little girl suckling contentedly at her pacifier against his chest, and then to his young lad that was shuffling the toe of his boot into the dirt. There were plenty of questions that came to mind about the hows and whys of his children being transported throughout time and space - and just how far into both they had traversed – but the more curious one was the one that finally passed through his lips toward his son.

"Just how did your baby sister end up in your class at the academy?"

Gallifrey chuckled sheepishly at that. "Yeah. That's a good question, isn't it? Long story, really…"

A thundering guttural growl rumbled through the trees surrounding them. The Doctor looked toward the source of the sound with wide eyes and a slight shake in his head.

"Unfortunately, your story must wait, my boy," he warned worriedly. "I think we just might be out of time for the telling of tales and spinning of yarns."

Gallifrey gulped as the ground shook at their feet with the rhythmic shudder of an approaching beast. He held his hand out to his father. "I think you might be right."

"I usually am," he called back sharply as he snatched Gallifrey's hand in his and tugged forcefully back in the direction from where he'd come through the thicket. "Now come on. No time to dawdle. To the TARDIS."

"Are you gonna be able to run with squirmy worm there in your arms?"

Massive tree trunks splintered out to either side as a gigantic scaled beast burst into the small clearing. It lowered its massive shoulders down level to the Doctor and roared a thunderous cry through gleaming yellow teeth dripping with slimy silver saliva.

The Doctor gulped and gave a single nod. His hand tightened around his son's. "I think I can manage, my boy. Now. If you don't mind… Run!"


	2. Mel B (She's not a Spice Girl)

A/N: really have nothing to say about this chapter except ... I dunno ...

I watched the tail-end of Sixth's incarnation over the weekend just to see what it was that led to the TARDIS being zapped and Six regenerating and realized that I have a really awesome amount of wriggle room here! It's not even halfway clear what happened ... so .. that said ... yeehaa...

Now. I am trying to get a handle on characterizations in this chapter ... on Mel, and on Six ... and, of course, getting used to Gal once more. So this might seem pointless to you ... it actually meant a great deal to me.

Oh. I'm changing the Tags .. I realized that I have more players that I can use, which means oh so much awesome fun for me as a writer! (one more set-up chapter and then into the good stuff!) So let's add the Valeyard and Anthony Ainley's Master, shall we?

SQUEAK!

~~oooOOOooo~~

Melanie Bush, a tiny woman who was as feisty as her hair was wild, impatiently drummed her fingernails against the very edge of the console as she waited for the return of her travelling companion to the TARDIS. She didn't lean down onto the console with both hands as the Doctor might've done if he found himself in the same frustrating situation. No. A hunched, two-palmed lean against the console only promoted poor posture and slackened muscles. Melanie preferred to stand tall with her shoulders back, chest forward, core engaged and feet spaced only a hip-width apart. Although _properly postured,_ this stance still allowed her to neatly drum her perfectly manicured fingernails against the console's edge in a display of annoyance. Why, her tiny stature was at such a perfect height against the TARDIS central console that all it took was a lady-like tilt in her wrists no greater than a well postured typist at her desk.

Perfect! And if she focused enough on the positioning of her fingers as she drummed them on the table-top, then she could quite easily mentally-type a long letter to the Doctor outlining her displeasure at being so sharply told to stay in the TARDIS as he stormed out through the roundel-covered twin-doors of the time ship.

Stay inside, indeed. He may as well have told her to _sit_ like a _good girl_ and then offer her a dog biscuit.

Melanie set her lower jaw ahead of the top and scowled a little as she mentally typed up a formal letter of resignation. The body of the letter included a comprehensive list of all of the reasons why she was about ready to storm out of those doors and take on adventures all on her own.

Oh, if she wasn't as mad as hell at that pompous, fashion-blind alien man. They may not have been travelling companions for too long a period of time, but they'd been together long enough that he surely understood by now that she was far more fearless, capable and ready to dive headlong into whatever lay beyond the TARDIS doors than probably anyone he'd ever met. In fact, she was so confident of her keen gusto that she was sure he'd never meet anyone anywhere near as eager and capable companion as she was.

That very point made its way onto the mental list she was continuing to compile to set against her resignation. She would set that specific fact on the list of reasons why he really _shouldn't_ accept her leave. That along with her insistence that he agree to give her far more respect and benefit of the doubt going forward…

…and while he was at it, the Doctor needed to agree to trust her complicitly to create a real fitness and nutritional program that would far better align his health and conditioning to better combat against the stresses that his lifestyle put upon his aging body.

His moaning and whining about vegetable shakes and carrot juice were far better suited to insolent children and fussy toddlers, not a 900-odd year old man. She had not given up on him, and she wasn't about to. Not yet. Fight her as he will, Mel was on a mission to bring this incredible man to peak fitness.

She pulled her imaginary paper from the typewriter in her mind and balled it up to toss it with perfect precision into the waste bin of her mind. Walking out of the doors in the midst of a temper tantrum was not exactly an adult way to deal with her ire toward the behavior of the Doctor. That would indicate defeat, and defeat simply wasn't an option. She would talk this out with him when he returned to the TARDIS and she would emerge victorious.

That made her smile a wide and beaming grin across her cheeks. She settled back on her heels with her arms folded across her chest to wait for the Doctor to return.

Wait for his return.

She checked at the petite watch that she had wrapped around her delicate wrist and her brow furrowed with concern. Thirty three minutes. That's how long he'd been gone - Thirty five minutes if she wanted to include the moment that her joking and jovial Doctor's face fell into an expression of pure fury and he stormed out of the TARDIS.

She couldn't pinpoint what had happened. No matter how many times her mind had worked around the happenings inside the console room from the moment they'd left Gallifrey until the second he stormed through the TARDIS doors, she couldn't isolate any one thing that would have turned him so mad. It wasn't the Valeyard, or the Master; she knew that much for sure. The fury he showed toward those Time Lords was much different to the pitch-dark expression that overtook him.

The Master and the Valeyard brought out pompous and arrogant anger from within the Doctor that was more betrayed hurt than fury. What had stormed by her thirty three minutes ago was absolute seething fury. With the Time Lords, the Doctor was fit to argue. Whatever it was that took him this time … The Doctor looked ready to kill…

Her breath shuddered out of her as she considered that revelation.

Okay. He had another ten minutes out there. In ten minutes, she would go looking for him. In ten minutes she'd go out there and save him … again.

Her breath hitched in deep with surprise as the twin doors of the console room burst open and a scruffy youngster rushed inside. Melanie was immediately taken aback by the young lad's frantic wide eyes and the TARDIS' open welcome.

"Hello Auntie TARDIS," Gallifrey called out as he moved with almost sonic speed toward the centre console. He didn't look up at the rotor, nor the ceiling of the ship. Instead he merely waved a hand and focused his gaze on the controls at his fingertips. "Don't mean to be rude an'all, but we found ourselves in a bit of a bind, Dad'n me, so I gotto ask you to let me get us outta here quick-smart. I promise to give you a kiss and a cuddle when we're all safe, yeah?"

He stopped talking and looked up as the Doctor half exploded into the room with a clapping, squealing and excited little girl on his hip.

"Again, Daddy. Again!"

"Dad. You stay there and hang on to Tafelshew, I'll put us up into the vortex, yeah?"

Mel's eyes widened with surprise. She looked toward the Doctor, and then to the excited bounce of a young girl against his hip. Her eyes rose to his again. " _Dad_?"

The Doctor seemed to ignore her presence in favour of correcting the young lad at the console and shifting the giggling little girl from one hip to the other. "I think not, young Gallifrey," he spat out with practiced authority. "You are far too young to handle a time ship as brilliant as the TARDIS."

Gallifrey waved a dismissive hand toward his father without looking at him. "Oh. Please. You'n me have been copiloting the TARDIS for nearly a year now," he argued with a shake in his head. "I've become quite proficient in handling this big, beautiful girl, thankyouverymuch." He grinned and looked up at the rotor column. "Isnt' that right, Auntie? You like it when your little Gal inputs the molecular dematerialization coordinates to initiate the sublaminar process modulations and set Walrus Mode for Vortex travel, don't you?"

The Doctor arched a brow and gave the youngster a weary look. He didn't bother to shield the facetiousness from his voice when he spoke. "Yes. Yes. You can speak big words and even use them in the correct context. You are such a very clever boy, aren't you?"

Gallifrey kept his eyes on the rotor and shrugged rather nonchalantly. "Well. What'd you do to him that's made him so techy, hmmm? Are you bypassing his commands and not taking him to where he wants to go again?"

"Techy?" the Doctor barked, insulted. "I will have you know that Time Lords do _not_ get _techy_!"

Even Mel had to laugh at that.

Gallifrey fell silent at the unfamiliar laugh that sounded out from across the console. He rose up onto his toes to look across the console. His curious expression shifted to a look of thrill and a wide smile spread across his cheeks. "Oh! A new companion!"

He quickly jogged around he console and wiped his palms on the thighs of his trousers before extending a hand in greeting. "Hi! I'm Gallifrey. Gallifrey Tyler."

Melanie's eyes dropped first to the small hand and then shifted up to look at the spray of freckles across the young boy's face that seemed to be a landing pattern to shift one's eyes toward his. "Uh…"

"But you can call me Gal," he continued with a toothy smile as he jutted his hand toward her with eager encouragement for her to take it. He tipped his head in his father's direction. "I don't reckon he's mentioned us at all, but I'm that Rainbow's pride and joy. His son. Well. Not the son of _this_ version of him. No. I'm from much further in his future – five incarnations worth to be exact." He shrugged with a smile and kept his hand in place waiting for her to take it. "And if you listen to my dad – not this one, the incarnation that actually sired me, oh, almost eleven years ago now. Oh, by my time line that is - then you'd realize that apparently Time Lords get younger with age." He looked back toward his father. "You're, what, Nine-fifty?"

"Nine hundred and fifty three," he answered dryly. "Now, Gallifrey. There's no need…"

"And yet when you're in your Ninth and you meet mum, you tell her that you're only nine-hundred," Gallifrey interrupted with wide eyes. He let out a small hum, shrugged and looked back to Melanie. "Don't let 'im tell you that Time Lords aren't vain and will lie about their age."

Gallifrey stopped talking right there and looked toward Melanie with wide and expectant eyes. He thrust his hand out once more. "Well? Gonna introduce yourself? Be kinda rude if you don't."

Melanie blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her mind, her vision, and make sense of what had just walked in through the TARDIS doors. In front of her was a lad dressed in a crimson uniform outfit set of a tunic and trousers both were covered in dirt stains at the hip. He had a dirt covered face and dust in his hair, but had the most crystalline brown eyes and pure smile that she'd ever seen. His eyes and smile drew her in quickly and before her mind could process her movement, she had her hand in his and was speaking.

"I'm Melanie Bush," she said quickly with a smile of her own. "But most people call me Mel." She kept her hand in Gallifrey's and looked toward the Doctor, who was in the motion of setting Tia to the floor. "How come you never told me that you're a _father_?"

The Doctor offered his young daughter a loving smile and petted her head as he rose back up to a stand. He waited a hearts beat or two before clearing his throat and looking toward her. "Do forgive my non-disclosure of my wife and children, but the topic – and the timeline – really hasn't come up."

Gallifrey shrugged and pulled his hand free of Mel's. "Guess we just don't warrant being brought up in conversation."

"Don't speak such nonsense," the Doctor barked back quickly. "As you stated, young Gallifrey, you are my pride and joy – my son. My affections for you and your mother are greater than the universe in its entirety." He strode forward and pressed his hand down gently on top of Gallifrey's head. His hand slid down to cup the young boy's cheek in his palm. "Yet to speak of you when I know that my home – my life - with you doesn't begin in nearly three centuries pains me greatly. To be so far away from you and your mother is the greatest agony I have ever known."

Gallifrey covered the Doctor's hand in his own. "I love you, too, Dad."

The Doctor let the moment linger for only a couple of moments. With a sudden growl of thrill, he stood tall and hauled his young son up into his arms. He spun in place with a laugh. "It is so very good to see you, Gallifrey. You have no idea how I have needed the joy you bring into my day over this past little while." He stopped spinning and gave the young lad a youthful, boyish grin. "And now that you're here. How about an adventure with your old Dad before I have to take you back to your mother and … well … and myself?"

"Will you let me pilot Aunty TARDIS?"

The Doctor's smile was still wide and his voice jubilant. "Absolutely not!" He laughed at Gallifrey's groan of disappointment and set his feet on the ground. "No one pilots my TARDIS but me."

"And mum," Gallifrey countered darkly as he folded his arms across his chest and lowered his head to pout. "You let mum pilot her." He pointed his finger up into the Doctor's face before he could counter. "And don't you go about pulling the _adult card_ to argue on this one. Being a grown up doesn't matter."

"Oh I counter that it does, young Lord."

"Yeah?" Gallifrey huffed. "Yeah, well they let me do it at the Academy. I'm top of my class in temporal physics and…"

"And yet somehow you ended up across the other side of time and space," the Doctor interrupted with a roll in his eyes. "Without a time capsule and without your parents…"

"Now _that_ ," Gallifrey huffed indignantly. " _that_ is absolutely _not_ my fault…"

"…with your little sister in tow," the Doctor continued curiously. "And just _how_ little is she then?" He looked toward his son. "Two? Three?"

"One and a half," Gallifrey muttered as he thumbed hard at his nose. "She's one and a half years old if we follow the Gregorian – or Earth – calendar."

"Earth?" The shrill and incredulous question seemed to bounce off every roundel in the console room. "You mean you're _human_? Your mother is _human_?"

Gallifrey spun toward Mel. His eyes were blown wide with curiosity of his own. "Is there anything wrong with that?"

Mel took a stride back and raised her palms to him. She shook her head as she spoke. "No. Nothing wrong with it. I mean whatever – whoever – you fall in love with is perfectly fine." She looked to the Doctor. "I'm just …" She stopped with a startled screech as the TARDIS suddenly lurched to one side and then fell back upright with an almighty clang. Above their heads the cloister bells rang out and the entire room fell into a deep crimson glow.

"What's wrong?" Mel cried out urgently as she watched the Doctor run to the console. "What's happening?"

"I'm not quite sure, Mel," he shot back through his teeth as he let his eyes scan the console and his hands manipulate lever after lever. "I'm trying to get the TARDIS into flight, but she's completely unresponsive."

Gallifrey moved in close to his side. He looked up with innocent and apologetic eyes. "I promise you, Dad. I didn't touch anything."

The Doctor shook his head and leapt side to side as he toggled different controls spread along the panels. "Oh, my dear boy. This isn't anything that any of us have done. Your Aunt is merely warning me of a potential imminent temporal collision … I think … Noting at all for you to worry about. I just have to connect to the main logic junction and try to isolate the location of the vortex discontinuity." He gave his son a wink. "Now be a good lad and please tend to your sister, who is no doubt quite terrified by these events."

"If she's terrified, Dad. She's not going to want me. Tafelshrew's a total daddy's girl when she gets freaked out."

Melanie popped up in the space between them. "I think the little one thinks she's at a disco. She's been dancing in the lights and bells since they started."

Both the Doctor and Gallifrey leaned backward from the console to look past the table toward the little girl wearing a pink onesie and tights. Sure enough, Tia was quite happily sucking on a pacifier and twirling pirouettes in the lights. She swiveled her hips and shoulders in perfect time with the clanging cloister bells.

"Tell me, Son. Does your sister get that from your mother." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Or from me?"

"Yeah, you might not want me to _honestly_ answer that question."

The lights in the console room suddenly brightened into white lighting and the bells ceased their incessant clanging. Mel, Gallifrey and the Doctor raised their heads to look at the ceiling in confusion.

"I wonder why they stopped," the Doctor mused quietly to himself. "It is rather odd for the bells to toll and then stop like that without an intervention of sorts." He looked back down at his console and frowned at the monitor. "The data here suggests that the alert was born from the TARDIS, which means only she could silence them."

Mel leaned a fraction closer to him and grinned through a fire-red curled fringe at him. "A _mystery_ , Doctor?"

He grinned back at her and offered her a cheeky wink. He lowered his voice to a husky whisper. "Oh, and I do love a good mystery, don't you, Mel?"

"Oh," she huffed with a smile of excitement. "You know it, Doctor." She let out a yelp when a scruffy, freckled little face moved past her face to level a glare toward the Doctor. "What the…?"

"Are you flirtin', Dad?" Gallifrey shot in quite angrily. "Really? Flirtin'? In the presence of your kids with a woman who is _not_ your wife?"

"I am doing no such thing," the Doctor blustered, obviously insulted. "Time Lords, and myself in particular, do not _flirt_."

"Oh," Gallifrey laughed darkly. "I am calling a paddock load of high quality bullsh…" His words caught before he could spit out a swear when the front doors burst open and a rather disheveled Rose Tyler stumbled into the console room.

Gallifrey gasped in awe and shock and incredulous disbelief when Rose quickly turned in place to slam the doors shut with both hands.

"I didn't say it, mum," Gallifrey defended really fast. "I mean it. Time Lad's honour here. I did _not_ drop any bombs that may or may not begin with any of the following letters." He counted each letter off on his fingers. "A.S.D.F. or P."

Rose Tyler spun around and pressed her rump into the door. Both her hands were pressed against the interior of one of the roundels as though not to let her butt fall completely into the deep recess. "But you were going to, weren't you?"

He gasped. "Just what kind of parental hocus-pocus do you have, mum?" He held out both hands in confusion. He turned them to his father, to Mel, to the console, and then back to Rose. "How did you-? Is this it now? Is this how I make sure that you find me if I ever get lost? All I have to do is swear…"

" _Excuse_ me?"

"… _t-think_ of swearing, I mean," Gallifrey stammered in a backpedal. "because I didn't, you know. I might have considered it. But I didn't." His eyes widened and he pointed up to the Doctor. "Dad was _flirting_ , by the way. Just so you know."

Rose rolled her eyes and then looked across to Mel. He offered an apologetic smile and then looked back to Gallifrey with a smile in her eye. "You say _that_ like it isn't a hobby of his."

The Doctor stepped forward a look of absolute longing on his face. "Rose. My-"

Rose held her hand out to him in a demand for him to stop. "You, I'm going to deal with in a moment." She flicked her eyes back to Gallifrey. "Now you, young man. I'm going to deal with _right now_."

"It'd be appropriate to swear now, yeah," Gallifrey tried meekly. "You know. Cause I'm already in trouble, yeah?"

Rose dropped her head to offer little Tia a warm smile as the little girl wrapped her arms around Rose's leg. She petted gently on her little nest of brunette curls. "Hello, baby. You okay?"

"Tafelshrew is happy," she spluttered happily around her pacifier. "Adventure, mummy!" She ran off around the console, holding her arms out and making the sounds of an airplane in flight.

Rose exhaled loudly through her nose and looked up to Gallifrey. "Did you see that thing outside, Gal? Did you?"

Gallifrey nodded in short and rapid movements. "I did, mum."

Rose lifted her hand above her head in a display of height. "This bloody big, with purple iridescent scales, reptilian legs, heat sensing eyes." She dropped her hand down over her mouth to indicate a large set of teeth. "Fangs as long as your arm…"

"That drip with pure silver," Gallifrey offered with a little more assurance and confidence in his voice. "And breath that is so bad it's been rumoured that it can kill you if you're exposed for too long."

"And a roar," Rose kept on, "that can deafen an already deaf man." She shook her head and winced. "Gal. Do you have any idea what that thing was?"

Gallifrey nodded eagerly. "Yes, mum. I know. I do. I know what it was and how to get away from it. Me and Dad. We escaped it, all in one piece you know. Bad breath and huge fangs…"

"What was it called," Rose thundered loudly. "Tell me what it was that almost killed the lot of you."

"It was a Xristar?" Gallifrey offered in a question. His eyes widened and he looked to his mother with thrill in his eyes. "Mum! That was a Xristar!"

"I _know_ ," Rose sang with excitement as she bounced lightly in place. "Rarest species in the entire universe!"

"That is just too cool, mum!" He shot forward into her arms in an excited embrace. He bounced with excitement, himself. "We have to go find it again and take a picture. They'll never believe me at the Academy. I need proof! I can't believe it. We actually saw a Xristar! Dad is going to be so bummed that he missed it…"

"Well no, not really," the Doctor injected with a gentle voice and a hopeful smile. "I _am_ here, afterall. I _was_ there and _did_ pull both you and your sister out of harms way when the Xristar burst into the clearing. That said, I'm sure you understand, I didn't miss a thing."

Rose released her son and steeled herself as she approached the Doctor. Her eyes were furious and her voice low. "Yes. You _were_ there, weren't you, Doctor?" She approached him like a hunter stalking prey. "Because you've been here in this time watching this all play out before, haven't you?"

"My darling," the Doctor ventured carefully. "I swear to you on the tomb of Rassilon that this is my first visit to Zasiphi."

"Gal. Please take Tia to the galley and fix her a snack." She asked him gently. "I'll be with you in a second, okay?"

Gallifrey blinked in confusion. He furrowed his tiny brow, and then he gasped in a breath of understanding. "Uh, yeah. Sure mum." He held down his hand to his sister. "Come on, Tafelshrew. Mum and dad need some of their alone time, yeah? You don't need to see that kind of thing. Totally ew to see your parents doing that kind of thing. All those cooties and squickiness." He continued to point out the gross points of his parents snogging to his little sister as he disappeared down the hall.

The Doctor smiled toward Rose and tipped his head cheekily. "The Doctor and Rose Tyler in the TARDIS _snogging_." His grin widened. "Why, yes. I can certainly see the appeal in that."

Rose strode up quickly toward him. It was clear to him without even using their bond that there were several emotions making her surge toward him right now. All he had time to do, however, was to brace himself for whatever was to come.

His mind called to her to kiss him, and kiss him to stupidity. His mind begged her to do just that. He ever pursed his lips and closed his eyes to receive her sweet touch.

Her hand across his cheek, swift, hard and painful was therefore entirely unexpected. So too were the quiet and strained words that followed the strike.

"I _hate_ you."

The Doctor's eyes flashed open with shock and he let them follow her movement as she spun on her heel and walked out of the console room toward the Galley. He didn't even bother to rub out the sting of her strike. For some reason he didn't feel like he had the right to do so.

"What in the name of Rassilon did I do?"


	3. Six vs Ten vs an Unhappy Wife

The sting of Rose Tyler's slap still burned across his cheek and jaw even a full minute after she'd struck him. The agony in his hearts at her words of hatred stung even moreso. What had he done to anger her so very thoroughly?

Melanie voiced the very same question inside of a rather uncomfortable and forced high-pitched chuckle. She took her place at his side close to the console and looked down into the same empty corridor that the Doctor blankly stared down.

"I have no idea what I've done," the Doctor breathed softly in reply. "It's been months since I saw them last, and our last visit ended quite pleasurably."

"I'll try to keep that image out of my head, thankyou," she replied in a chipped tone who's annoyed intent was betrayed by an amused grin. That grin fell to an expression of open-mouthed curiosity as she tipped her chin up to regard him via his side profile. "So. You're not only a _father_ , but you're also a _husband_?"

"I am," he answered along a breath.

"Yet you travel alone," her eyes widened and her lips pinched. "Well. Not _alone_ in the truest sense of the word. You travel with your companions – all of whom I'm noticing are female."

The Doctor's eyes were still on the empty corridor doorway and his voice was still quite gentle. "My relationship with my wife and children is somewhat temporally complicated." He sniffed. "And if I might say quite agonizing at times."

Mel smiled warmly and lifted her hand to touch at the red hand impression on his cheek. She cupped her hand long enough to draw his eyes toward hers and lightly traced her thumb along the impression's edge. "I can see that."

The Doctor quickly lifted his hand to cover hers, and then slowly coaxed it off his cheek. "You misunderstand me," he began in a voice growing more confident with each word. "Physical pain such as the sting of a slap from my frustrated wife is a pain quite bearable. It reminds me that I should take much more care to treat her with all of the respect and honour that she deserves." He smirked. "Rassilon – and quite likely most of Gallifrey – knows that oftentimes I lack the humility to treat those around me with anything other than weary disdain."

"Oh," she sang with a grin and a dip in her chest in amusement. "You're not telling me anything I don't already know, Doctor."

He grinned widely at that and turned toward the console. "So a slap from my beloved is a reminder that in my future I need a rather smart dressing down."

Mel's brow flicked and she gave an exaggerated raking of her eyes up and down his multicoloured jacket. "I'm not sure that you're the right man to be _dressing_ anyone…" She chuckled and looked to the monitor, which was flickering as it warmed up. "Up _or_ down."

He let out a sigh through a small smile as he tapped in a series of commands into the Console computer. "It's called _fashion_ , Mel. Look it up and you'll find that my style aligns quite nicely with the haute couture of many rather fashionably respected planets."

"Oh," she scoffed. "Really?"

"Says you," he snarked in reply with a deliberate regard of her pink and white-striped jacket, white trousers and legwarmers. "Broad shoulders belong on masculine physiques." He sniffed. "Legwarmers with runners is so very nineteen eighties." He sighed distractedly as he searched through a series of twisting circular glyphs on his monitor. His voice fell to a mere whisper as he concentrated. "Just where are you, Doctor?"

Mel – oblivious to his obvious search online - leaned in to bump his shoulder with hers. "I _am_ from the eighties, Doctor. In my timeline, this is _haute couture-_ " she paused and gasped as an image suddenly popped up with a blip onto the screen in front of her. "Oh my."

The Doctor took hold of the lapels of his jacked and leaned back onto his heels. "And speaking of those who are fashion retarded. By the Gods, man. What _are_ you wearing?"

A portrait image of the Tenth Doctor flickered and then shifted into focus on the TARDIS display monitor. He was quite regally attired in a scarlet robe lined with brilliant golden orange, topped with a scarlet helmet nestled within an elaborate golden headdress. He looked decidedly uncomfortable and eagerly removed the scarlet cap and headdress at the Doctor's taunt.

"Says the walking rainbow," Ten defended indignantly. He pointed toward the camera and twirled his finger in a small circle. "The only thing _that_ outfit is good for is visibility in a snow storm."

"I'd rather take that small measure of visibility over the blinding beacon across galaxies of yours," Six argued hotly. "Do tell me, my good man. Just why are you in the ceremonial robes of council – and please tell me you're wearing it as a prank."

Ten rolled his eyes and let out a huff. "I'm quite sure you haven't logged a trunk call across time and space to remark upon my attire, Doctor." He steeled his gaze to look directly at the man. "I've been called from a council meeting to take this call, and while I do very much appreciate the break you're offering me. I'd appreciate it more if you'd get to the point."

Six scoffed with horror. "In a _Council meeting_? Oh by the Gods do tell me I haven't retired from travelling to take up a position on council."

Ten grinned a mischevious smile. "What you have to look forward to, _my good man_."

Six slouched with defeat. "You have to be jesting, Doctor. There is very little in this universe that would render me in a place where I would need to become a pompous fool on council."

Ten barked out a laugh. "Pompous is our middle name!"

"Be that as it may," he countered with a shake in his head. "I have declined many offers to take a position at council, including the Lord Presidency."

Mel grinned at his side. "He did that just yesterday, actually."

"Oh," Ten breathed out only a moment before his eyes widened and he let out another similar sound, only this one with a sense of discovery. "Oh! So _that's_ where you are in your timeline. Nice to know I got it right." His brows fell into a wince of regret. "And now I know why you called."

"I should expect so," Six barked impatiently. "And I expect you to explain to me, _Doctor_ , why my beloved wife is angry enough at my behavior that she not only slapped me, but told me that she hated me."

Ten had the grace to look apologetic. "That would be my fault."

"I would most certainly expect that it does," he growled in reply. "I haven't seen Rose and Gallifrey in several months. Our last meeting was one of love, thrill and passion, and I recall no moments between us that would warrant such a reaction this time around."

"Perhaps I want to take the _passion_ out of any subsequent meetings," Ten grumbled petulantly under his breath.

"Thank you for giving me a challenge," Six growled out darkly enough to startle Mel. "Once I have fallen to my knee in solemn apology for whatever misdeed you undertook to upset her so, I will endeavor to make reparations and prove to her my honour, love and devotion." He inhaled to stand tall and to look down his nose at the image on the TARDIS monitor. "As a true Lord of Time and gentleman should."

"You're neither," Ten rebuked through a curled lip of annoyance. "So stop with your pompous caterwauling. Deflate your chest and look at me properly. Remember," he flicked his finger up at the screen. "You'll be _me_ one day. Which," he grinned flirtatiously toward Melanie. "I'm sure, Mel will agree, is a vast improvement over the rubbish that regeneration spat out when you opened your eyes."

"I'm going to ignore your obvious attempt to engage in argumentative banter, Doctor." Six pressed his palm into the console and raised his head to let out a long breath of annoyance. "The fate that I shall become you is sealed to me, I suppose. And I certainly do hope that the incarnation that results in you will be extremely short-lived."

"I intend to hold on to this mind and body for a great long while yet." He grinned cheekily. "After all. I'm the one our wife likes best."

"Debatable at this juncture, I assure you."

Melanie's face contorted into a confused and questioning wince. She held up her hand in between the Doctor's nose and Ten's image on the screen. "Hold on a minute. What do you mean when you say that he's going to become you one day?" She cast her eyes to Six. "What is he talking about? Is there something I need to know about you, Doctor?"

He held up a dismissive hand. "Oh there's plenty about me that you don't know, Mel. Some of it important, some of it not. But none of it is truly pertinent-"

"It's called regeneration," Ten interrupted. "He's got twelve of them. Thirteen different faces. I happen to be one of them."

"But…"

"If the technicoloured yawn standing beside you gets hurt enough that he's going to die, then he regenerates into a new man. New face. New body. New Teeth. New Hair. New … well. New _everything,_ really." He looked to Six and tipped up his shoulder as he finally shrugged out of the robe to reveal the pinstripes underneath. "Really. It might be a good time to start warning our companions about this inevitability, Doctor."

"Excuse me?" she injected worriedly. "What? What are you talking about." She looked back to six. "Doctor. Please explain this to me."

"It's really none of your concern, Mel," Six assured her with a pet on her shoulder. "If and when the next occasion rises that I'll need to enter a regenerative state, it will be long after your human life has been extinguished by age."

"Yeah," Ten sang with a roll in his eyes and distance in his voice. "I wouldn't be too sure about that."

Mel looked horrified – in a confused sort of way. "But-"

Both of Six's hands slammed down hard on the console. "Enough! Mel. Stop listening to this demented space tramp." He jabbed his finger against the monitor as though to dig it into Ten's chest. "You are going to stop with the insults and attempts to deflect your misdeed against our wife by scaring my companion, and explain to me just why it is that Rose says she hates us."

Ten curled his entire top lip and rolled his eyes with a huff. "She doesn't _hate_ us," he defended condescendingly. "She is mad. Yes. Very mad in fact. This is an ire that it most definitely my fault…"

"Yes, yes," Six moaned impatiently. "I understand that point with brilliant clarity, thank you. If you would dare to describe just what it was that you did to anger her, I'd appreciate that you get to it. My time with Rose and my children is very limited and I'd rather not waste that time talking to you."

Ten nodded. "Right. Yes. Of course. Rose's anger toward me that was deflected quite effectively toward you. Thanks for that."

"Oh do get on with it."

"Well," he sang with obvious unease. "It might be because I didn't quite display the level of worry and concern about the safety of our children that Rose would have thought appropriate before I had one of the Chancellery guards drop her off at your location via constabulary transport." He rubbed at the back of his neck and winced. "In fact I might admit to not even leaving council chambers to address the situation directly."

Well. Six didn't know how to respond to that revelation. Even though his face fell into an unreadable expression, it was clear simply by his posture that he was completely stunned and confused by his elder self's behavior.

Mel had a better grasp on it. "Well no wonder she hit you, Doctor. Telling her that you've been having an affair on her would be less likely to upset her than you neglecting the kids."

"Let's be clear that there is no neglect," Ten cut in quickly. "I love those two children more than I love myself, this universe and my TARDIS combined. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for them, or for Rose. There just happen to be very specific reasons why I couldn't react in the manner that a devoted dad like myself should act." He swallowed thickly and winced with regret. "Reason being that I knew I had to stay as far back as possible knowing that they were in safe hands." He looked up to the Doctor. " _My_ hands."

"And what might those reasons of yours be, Doctor," Six bellowed angrily. "Because I can tell you that not even a rupture in the fabric of time itself would stop me-"

"Oh say that when you're me," Ten snapped. "when you're in _my_ shoes."

"I vow on the Tomb of Rassilon, Doctor, that I would _never_ -"

"If I Step into this right now we could fracture our own timeline enough that Rose and the kids-"

"Don't say it," Six broke in urgently. "Please don't. Don't even halfway tempt the universe with a dare like that." He dropped his head and rubbed at his brow. "You know as well as I, that any measure of complacency we have granted ourselves will only result in the universe acting in her usual cruel, cruel way against us."

Ten nodded. 'I'm glad you're seeing it my way."

Six scrubbed his hand down his face and looked up into his own eyes with his typical sharp focus. "Was it really so necessary to show that level of detachment toward your wife and children, Doctor?"

Ten dropped his head with a rueful nod. His breath was slow and audible for a few moments. When he lifted his head to look back at the two occupants of the TARDIS, his eyes were red and glassy. His voice was full of emotion, broken and jagged, when he answered. "Yeah. Yeah, it was. The only way for me to have the strength to maintain the timeline is to separate myself from it completely. I can only do that here on Gallifrey."

Six swallowed thickly and looked toward Mel with a worried look in his eye.

"When I woke up this morning," Ten began on a quiet voice before his younger self could continue with the questions. "I woke up wrapped around my wife. A Time Lord cocoon if you will.."

"Has this got a point?" Six interrupted sharply.

Ten ignored the question to continue. "I held my wife against my chest, while my ten-year-old son lay spread out on his back behind me." He lowered his head to chuckle and then looked back up through his brows with a cheeky expression. "Our precious Flubble is terrified of thunderstorms. Freaks out and hides like a little cobblemouse, that one. Well. Last night we had quite a squall line move through the mountains. There was no way he was sleeping in his own bed…"

Six found himself chuckling quietly at that revelation, but didn't comment.

"So that said. My Flubble," Ten continued with a smile and a chuckle of his own. "Oh, that precious boy is too much like his dad at times. He can't stay still for a moment. Even when he's asleep. Likes to roll around and twist and turn." He lifted his head and stood a little straighter. "So when I woke up this morning, I had his scraggly little toe practically wedged up my right nostril and his scruffy little head was using my ankle as his pillow. Tafelshrew was lying across the pillows above all of our heads." He smiled fondly in remembrance. "Little Tia's not quite gotten out of the habit of gnawing on her fingers when she's asleep, so I had a soggy little set of digits smearing toddler goo across my forehead." He cleared his throat and spoke with a break in his voice. "That's what I woke up to this morning." His voice was still heavy with emotion as a tear tracked down his cheek. "I woke up to that tangle of limbs and I thought." He inhaled shakily. "I thought to myself that I am truly the luckiest man in the entire universe."

"What is the point of this, Doctor?" Six tried hard to exude impatience and frustration, but failed miserably. "Because I'm quite certain you have an actual point and are not simply being deliberately cruel."

Ten's eyes weren't focused on the Doctor, nor on Mel. His eyes bore pleadingly into the space beyond both of their shoulders. "I didn't even have the hearts to move either of them, Rose. I couldn't. I just wanted to lie there like that with you … with the kids for the rest of eternity." He snorted out wetly through his nose and shook his head. "Forget about the council meetings and my commitments as Lord President. Forget about the universe and time herself calling to me from across space. I just wanted to lay in and bask in the chaotic mess that always seems to surround us and the kids. I wanted to lie very still for a very long time and memorize that whole scene … Lie still, Rose! Me!" His voice dipped to little more than a whisper. "Tell me that understand just how profound that is for me to say…"

Rose sniffed a wet inhale of her own as she walked up beside the Doctor and regarded his tenth incarnation on the monitor. She acknowledged Six and Mel's hitched breaths of surprise with only a smile as she reached up to touch the monitor lightly with the very pads of her fingers. "Oh, Doctor."

"Please don't think for a moment that I wasn't as panicked as you were when we got word from the academy that Gal and Tia had been transported out of the hyperloom chambers."

Rose sniffed and nodded. She didn't remove her fingers from the monitor. A tear tracked down her cheek and her voice broke with pain. "But you didn't react. You didn't even come out of council chambers, Doctor." Pain shifted to anger and she removed her fingers to curl them into a tight fist. "You sent a chancellery guard out instead. A guard, Doctor! You had a guard that I've never even met order me into a transport to find my children."

"Rose. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She dropped her hand and her head. "As always," she sighed quietly. She looked off to the side, to where she could see Gallifrey and Tia playing a modified game of tag in the hallways beyond the console room. "They're both fine," she assured him without looking back at the monitor. "Both of them. They need a bath, and Tia needs to nap, but they're safe and uninjured."

"I knew they would be," Ten offered gently in a voice that urged her to look up at him. "You understand that. Right, Rose? You know that I've-"

"You might've been," she snapped in anger. "And I get it. Time Lord and all that." Her voice turned breathy and indignant. "You've been here before. You've already lived this part of the timeline so you know how it starts, how it plays out, and how it ends. But you're forgetting that _I_ haven't. _I_ didn't know that they'd landed where you were. _I_ didn't know what they'd be safe in the TARDIS playing about with another incarnation of you that knew them and loved them as much as you do. _I_ don't know if they are going to end up getting into a dangerous adventure because it's _impossible_ for you - any version of you - to _not_ get yourself involved in some kind of trouble."

"Rose-"

"No," she snapped as she lifted her hand in a definite demand for him to _stop talking._ "It's my turn to talk, yeah? You don't _ever_ get to be all nonchalant and Time-Lordy in your feelings and actions toward my children."

" _Our_ children," he corrected firmly.

"When you couldn't give a sod about showing any form of affection or care toward them in the presence of your other almighty emotionless Time Lord friends; when you couldn't even break from a meeting to assure me of their safety and instead send a stranger out to order me into a transport and send me off…" She panted heavily. Her voice dipped to dark. "Then you don't have the right to call them _yours_."

Darkness crossed Ten's features and before Six could step in to try and mediate, he had had replaced his ceremonial headdress, had the camera in hand and was marching toward the main council chambers.

"A declaration, Rose? An ostentatious display of my love for you and this kids in the presence of all of my _Time Lord Friends_? Is _that_ what you want from me to prove how much I care for and our kids?"

Rose's eyes widened as she watched the moving image on the monitor walk them through the brilliant-white halls of the citadel toward council chambers. She gasped at the respectful greetings of nodded heads of other Time Lords and then their swift side-step to get out of the way of what Rose _knew_ was the Oncoming Storm in his full regal splendor.

"Doctor," she tried with a soft voice. "You don't need to do this. I'm. I'm sorry."

His face didn't return to the monitor; it was instead filled with jerking images of the arborescent hallways and corner flashes of passing Time Lords and Ladies. "No, Rose," he snarled. "You asked for it. I'm going to show you."

The Sixth Doctor rubbed at his chin with worried curiosity. "Just what is that emotional fool up to?"

Mel leaned into him and spoke in conspiratorial tones. "If you say that he's _your_ future, Doctor. Then this means that-"

"Please don't remind me," he huffed in an equally quiet tone of voice. "I can think of several far better ways to appease and alieve the pains of my wife than to do what I think _he's_ about to do." He huffed another breath and shook his head. "Reactive. Always reactive. Why can't this be a trait that is exiled with regeneration?"

Six leaned forward to tap his fingertip against the lens of his own camera. "There is no need to humiliate ourselves, man. Think about this, you damn fool."

Ten was heard to huff out an ironic kind of laugh. He lifted the camera to show his face. "One thing you might want to familiarize yourself with, Doctor. When it comes to Rose Tyler – our ability to _think_ and _act rationally_ comes under considerable strain." He pursed his lips and dared to smile lightly. "Especially when she does this one thing. This brilliant swirly kind of thing with her.." He stopped and cleared his throat. "Quite impossible to do any form of thinking at that moment. Still. Irrelevant right now. "

Mel folded her arms down across her belly and tipped her hip to one side in a bit of a lean. "That would imply that you do have the ability to _think_ , Doctor."

Six looked toward his current companion. "I believe our most recent encounter proves that I have a rather superior ability to do just that, don't you?"

Rose ignored them both in favour of addressing her linearly-aligned husband. "Doctor. This is unnecessary. I know what you're going to do and I don't approve. I don't want the faces of your council members crowding the monitor looking all judgmental and Time Lord-y when I hear you tell me you love me." She snorted. "I don't do grandiose, you know that."

The stretch of the shadows across his face on the monitor and the awkward perspective of his angular features told all three of them that the Doctor was still walking the corridor, but he did so with a lowered head. Sounds of passing Time Lords crackled through the audio feed as the Doctor stopped walking and looked into the small handheld communications unit.

"Rose. You have to know that you, Tia and Gal are my entire universe,' he began with naked honesty. "If I had to destroy universes and the very fabric of time itself to ensure your safety, I'd do it without second thought." He sniffed and looked up off camera as though checking who might be present. "But." He looked back at the camera. "You have to know that if my intervention risked any timeline that brought you and I together, I have to step back." His expression cracked slightly. "This is one of those times. By the Gods, Rose," he breathed in a pained tone. "If I had come out of chambers and taken one look at your distress, I would've said to hell with the universe and risked it all. I couldn't. I can't do that, Rose. Not _this_ time."

"You could've said," she said brokenly.

"I'm saying it now, Rose." He sniffed wetly and paused as though trying to find composure before speaking again. "My whole reason for being locked up in these meetings in the first place is to analyse what's coming and to find just what juncture the points of time can allow me to intervene." He blinked slowly and lowered his head. "None of us can find a point that's safe."

Six frowned in both worry and puzzlement. "What are you talking about?"

"What I am talking about," Ten snapped sharply. "Is that our timelines – Rose and our timelines that is – are fixed. All of it. Each and every little branch, nook, and cranny. There is nothing – _nothing -_ in our timestream that allows for even the slightest deviation."

"That is an alarming revelation, Doctor," Six managed worriedly.

"More alarming is that any deviation from the lines that have already been travelled and those left to journey on, are already written." He scratched at his sideburn for a moment and then raked his palm down over his mouth and chin. "The perils of crossing in and out of each other's timelines, Doctor. Our selfishness to be with the woman we love has permanently carved our path into stone. Any change to it – any small change can have disastrous effects not only to the two of us, but toward the universe as a whole."

"Oh don't be so melodramatic, you obsequious fool," Six argued. "You know as well as I do that the universe can always compensate for any change, fixed or flux. The threats tumbling so gracelessly from your mouth are mere fairy tales we tell young Time Lads and Ladies in training to stop them from mucking about with the sands of time." He flicked his wrist toward the monitor. "You need to abandon this life of domesticity you've made for yourself on Gallifrey and get away from those pompous fools on Council. They've messed with your commonsense born from centuries of making changes within time." He looked quickly toward Rose and noted her firm jaw and narrowed eyes. "Not that a life of domesticity with you doesn't have its grand appeal, my beloved wife. But surely you are more suited to holding my hand and racing through the stars moreso than settling on Gallifrey."

"I love the life we have," she answered with a straight tone.

Six stared at her for a long moment as he imagined what settled life with her must be like. After a moment he inhaled and looked back to his older self. "As I was saying – and let us not take any of this to mean that I have any inclination at all to work alongside you or to have to hand my family back to you: the _fool_ incarnation of the Doctor, because I most certainly don't – but, even if you were to change a fixed point, the universe _will_ find a way to compensate for this change."

"That's true, Doctor. And if this compensation isn't sterilisation by the reapers, then there will be other casualties," Ten warned. "In _our_ case, the casualty would be Gallifrey and the Time Lords." He swallowed and shifted his eyes to look toward his wife. "Rose and I have seen what a universe without Gallifrey and the Time Lords looks like, haven't we, Love?"

Rose winced and nodded. "We never want to see that happen again."

Ten's voice softened to a tender timbre. "So do you understand, Rose? If I blindly interfered because my hearts shattered over your fear, we could risk it all." The timbre fell to a whisper. "And I won't risk you and the kids. Never."

"Couldn't you just tell me that?" She asked with a wet sniff. She wiped at her nose with the sleeve of her shirt.

His brows rose high, even though his eyes were lowered so that he could look at her. He shook his head lightly. "I didn't know until the moment I heard that the kids were gone," he admitted. "Knowing my future isn't always knowing the exact moment that it's going to strike me."

"Because those pesky Flux points changing what leads to it, right?" Rose offered gently. At his nod she covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, Doctor. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," he croaked with a thick swallow. He then flicked his eyes to his Sixth self and then back to Rose. "Now. Kiss me and spend some time making up. Take some of that _alone time_ that Gal's always accusing us of wanting." He looked off frame and gave a sharp nod at someone off frame. He then looked back and smiled apologetically. "I gotto go."

"I-I love you," she blurted out quickly, fearing he was about to vanish.

That made him smile a wide grin. "Quite right, too." He paused for just a fraction of a second to watch incredulity rise in her eyes and let out a laugh. "Rose Tyler. My hearts beat for you, as well, my precious girl. Now go ahead and kiss me before I burst." He flicked his eyes to Six. "Take the opportunity now, Doctor. Don't wait until later. Trust me on this."

Six's eyes widened with worry, but he shielded it quickly behind cheek as he slid his arm around the waist of his wife and tucked her in close. He didn't look back at the monitor as he swept his arm underneath her legs to pull her up into his arms and carry her from the room.

Mel watched them leave, and found herself laughing at a groan of disgust from the young boy Gallifrey as the pair passed him in the hallway.

"Mel."

She spun to see Ten's face still on the screen. "Oh! I thought you'd gone."

"I have to in a moment," he answered softly. "But before I go. I need to give you a message for the Doctor when he and Rose finally emerge from his quarters."

"An image I don't need thank you," she quipped with a roll in her eyes." She steadied herself and looked at him with seriousness. She'd heard the worry in his tone. "Tell me, Doctor. You _are_ the Doctor, right?"

He smiled and lowered his head with a chuckle. Slowly he lifted his gaze to hers. "If I had time, I'd regale you with the stories of our travels and remark upon the fact that you met me and became my travelling companion long before I even met you." His smile fell. "When I come to pick up my family, I'd love to catch up. I might even partake in a glass of carrot juice just for old time's sake."

"It's a date," she half cheered with a grin. The grin fell. "So. What do you need me to tell, well, you?"

The Doctor let out a long breath. He inhaled, held it, and then spoke. "Tell him that there is truth is within the lie, and that he needs to trust the ones who trust him most to see what is truth and what are lies."

Mel inhaled deeply. "As cryptic as always, I see."

"That trait will _always_ survive a regeneration, Mel. I wouldn't be a Time Lord without it."

"Can you tell me anything else that might help?"

The Doctor snorted. "Yes. Keep them safe, Mel. I'm counting on you … I can still count on you, right?"

"Absolutely."

The Doctor looked up over the frame, nodded with a firm expression, and looked back down. "Good bye, Mel. Tell them they are my universe and I'll see them very soon."

~~oooOOOooo~~

A/N: This is a long one .. sorry ... I couldn't find a cutoff point and the characters just wouldn't stop yacking!

Thanks for all the kudos and comments! It's so great to be back and playing around in my favourite playground again!

A big shout-out to LovelyAmberLight who has become a bit of a muse of mine. Not only was she the provider of the plot twist in "Just a Human" that allowed me to get back the Time Lords I like to play with, but she threw in my direction an idea that I just couldn't back away from. What was originally going to be some lighthearted fun, is now going to be a longer and - hopefully - more interesting tale. Thanks Amber - you totally rock! I hope that I can do your idea justice.

I really hope you'll enjoy this journey ... We will start off with a little drama in this chapter. Oh, and I apologise for absolutely nothing here. It's tooth rotting stuff, I know ... :)

~~oooOOOooo~~

The Doctor flicked open his Scarlet robe and dropped the hand held communications device into his trouser pocket. He pulled his robed closed and held them that way with a single hand held to his chest as he took up stride beside another robed Lord.

"Is everything okay, Lord President?"

The Doctor let out a sigh through an open mouth and shook his head. "Of course it's not okay, Lord Lovol," he muttered. "I've just sent my entire family into the clutches of two Time Lords who want to see me die. I am about seven galaxies and twelve solar systems away from okay." He spun on his fellow Lord and stuck a finger into his chest. "You _will_ find a way for me to be able to get there to help them out. It's this administration's fault that the criminal escaped our jail to create this timeline in the first place."

"And _yours_ , too," Lovol added coolly. "If it wasn't for your interference in the Medusa Cascade, there wouldn't have been a criminal that needed to escape."

The Doctor turned and scowled as he continued to walk toward council chambers. "If I hadn't interfered, then all of reality would have been destroyed. I had no choice and I won't apologise for it."

"It might help us to help you if you had better recall over this part of your timeline, Doctor."

He closed his eyes, but kept walking forward. Slowly, he opened them. "My recollection is hazy at best, Lord Lovol," he admitted. "For some reason, most of it's gone."

Lovol pressed his hand into the door to lead them into council chambers. He swallowed and looked back to the Doctor standing beside him. "Then you've made yourself forget – which can only mean that whatever is happening back along your timeline is something unpleasant enough that you would break the laws of time to interfere."

The Doctor winced, but relaxed his expression as the door to chambers opened. "I still might."


	4. Trickery

A/N: Thanks for the most awesome comments! They really give a girl the urge to push on through!

Right now ... please accept this chapter as another one to get a feel for the dynamics and set up the rollercoaster that's just outside the TARDIS doors...

I really hope you enjoy.

~~oooOOOooo~~

Melanie watched the "older" Doctor's image fade away with a curious – and quite possibly confused – pinch in her eye.

 _Regeneration_.

Well. That was a bit of a shock to have to hear. More shocking was the nonchalant drop of what was otherwise quite a spectacular bombshell. All she had really gleaned from the rather poor explanation of a biological function specific to his species was that if the Doctor was about to die, then he'd regenerate into a new man.

 _"_ _New face. New body. New Teeth. New Hair. New … well. New_ _everything,_ _really"_ the _other_ version of the Doctor had stated. The _other_ Doctor: who was quite fit, seemed remarkably younger, and was certainly much happier and less pompous than the man she was currently with.

And if all of this was true; that the Doctor would change into new if he exhausted the life in the body of the old, then did that mean that there was more than one of him? Thirteen faces all spread across time and space? Just _how_ old, exactly, did that make him? What body was he in now?

"Oh, I recognize _that_ look," Gallifrey's voice piped in from the doorway.

Mel immediately turned to the sound of the voice and tipped her head to one side with innocence. "What look is that?"

"Oh," he sang as he walked across the floor toward the console. He thrust one hand into his trouser pocket and leaned his hip against the console edge. "The look of confusion from a companion who has just been delivered a bomb by my dad, but wasn't given any real information to back it all up…" He set a tumbler filled with and unidentifiable purple liquid on top of the table and then scratched as his head. "…or _explain_ properly what exactly he was on about."

Melanie chuckled lightly. "Is it _that_ obvious?"

Gallifrey nodded as he lifted the tumbler to draw back on the cherry-striped straw. He swallowed noisily and gave her a smile. "For a man who likes to talk – a lot – he really doesn't say all that much, does he? Well," He sang on a long note. "Nothing that's wholly appropriate to the conundrum he's thrown your way, anyway. I mean, he's a good teacher and all that. He does love to regale you with all sorts of stories and anecdotes in an effort to educate you on just how exceedingly clever he is…"

"Showing off, you mean," Mel supplied with a smile.

Gallifrey had to laugh. "Oh, you've got him pegged. I think I'm gonna like you."

Mel leaned into him teasingly. "I like to think that I'm very likeable. Clever, too."

Gallifrey's eyes flared wide. "Well of course you are," he barked out. "You wouldn't be traveling with him if you weren't." His demeanour fell back into calm friendliness. "Dad only travels with the best, doncha know." He pursed his lips. "I've met a few of them, you know. His companions, that is. Martha was one of my favourites." His expression feel into a look of very fond remembrance. "Such a beautiful and smart woman." He tilted his head and rocked his shoulders to look up at Melanie. "If my future didn't tell me who I _actually_ get married to when I'm of age, I might've appeared on her doorstep when I turned twenty one with a rose in my hand and a plea for her to join me for dinner on the third moon of Jupiter." His eyes shifted to the rotor column and widened in thought. "Or maybe Zarine during the lunar festival. That's very pretty, although I have pretty intense memories of Mum and Dad smooching under the weeping Geryon trees." He motioned a retch. "So no, taa."

Mel's brows shot into her hairline. "You already _know_ your future?"

"Yeah," he muttered with a rub at the back of his head and a wince in his expression. "Though I wanna question it, really. Reckon it's more likely I was having a go at me than it actually being true." He rolled his eyes. "Because yeah, nah, no, nope."

Mel was amused and leaned one hand on the console to turn toward him. "Let me guess. You think girls are gross and that they'll give you cooties?"

That made Gallifrey laugh. "Yeah. Right now, maybe. That's part of it and all that. Too young to get myself tied up in all that nonsense." His eyes widened. "Though not too young to be a dad, apparently."

Mel's amusement fell. "Excuse me, what? You're a _father_?" She looked him up and down in panic. "But you're only, what, nine? Ten?"

"Almost eleven," he confirmed with a shrug. "And yeah. I've met my little girl. Arkytior – or Susan as she preferred to be called. Had to play both brother _and_ dad to her for a bit when we got stuck in 2009." He looked to Mel with wide eyes. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to be the same age as your daughter and have to go to the same school as her? How to deal with all the bullying against her and then her cheeky misbehavior on top of that?" His widened eyes stayed flared as he looked back to the rotor and shook his head with disbelief. "That. That was not fun."

"Curse of the time traveler," Mel supplied softly.

He nodded slowly. "Yep."

Silence followed his breathy affirmative with a lazily popped P. It lasted only a moment, however. Gallifrey shuddered and then shook himself free of the specifics of the memory.

"Anyway," he said with mirth. "At least I didn't have any explainin' to do when I got back to Gallifrey. That was all up to older me, and HA to that." He chuckled. "I know what she's like – my future wife that is – and so I know what kind of trouble he was facing when he got back." He rubbed at his chin as his voice fell into very quiet speculation. "I do have to wonder just how I managed to make her my wife, actually…"

"Which means that it'll be _your_ trouble when you get to that part of your timeline," Mel said with a wink. Interrupting Gallifrey's thoughts. "So you'd better start thinking of ways to make it up to her. Preempt her ire."

Gallifrey's eyes widened and his jaw slackened. "That kinda means doing what Dad does when he's made mum mad, doesn't it?" He gulped. "Oh. I don't know about that. That's kind've squicky."

Mel threw her head back to laugh. "Oh, you'll change your mind about that in due time."

His eyes were still wide and he shook his head. "No. No. No. I can't imagine it. I really can't. I mean. Don't get me wrong or nothin', I mean, I know it's not really all that bad. I. I. I got my baby sister out of the deal when it comes to dad makin' things up to mum." He grinned cheekily. "He got us stuck in 1969 for three months. Lot's of reparations there." He cleared his throat and winced. "But. While that might work for them'n all, I'm gonna stick with the looms for my kids I reckon."

"Looms?"

Gallifrey's jaw fell open and he breathed out through his gaped mouth. "Yeah. That's another one of those surprises of being an alien Time Lord…"

She held up her hand. "It's okay. Never mind." She then looked to the corridor. "And speaking of your sister. Where is she?"

Gallifrey shrugged. "Havin' a bath."

Mel's eyes flared wide and horrified. "Alone?"

Gallifrey's brows slammed together and he shook his head. "Don't be daft. Just because they left this room with all the pretense of having some _alone time_ doesn't mean they actually did it. They have their priorities right in that regard and halted anything nefarious and gross in order to play mum and dad. So-o-o-o. Mum's bathing Tafelshrew and Dad's in the kitchen steaming her some veggies for dinner. Much to his chagrin, of course," he laughed breathily through an open mouth. "Dad's got a thing against veggies for some reason. Says it should be a crime to give that to kids. Says that we need sweet things to keep our minds working at peak processing speed."

Gallifrey chuckled and pulled out his best impersonation of his father in his Tenth incarnation. "Sugar's essential to the brain function of our children, Rose. And our children have the big and beautiful brains of their ancestors. Time Lords, both of them." He spluttered. "Of course that isn't said to minimize the human brain, of course. Especially yours, my beautiful and exceedingly clever wife."

Mel laughed and shook her head. "But too much sugar, Gallifrey-"

"Yeah, yeah," he cut in. "Don't think that Mum hasn't got all the arguments against it that you do. She's pointed out the sugar content in fruit and vegetables in her own arguments of veggies versus jelly babies." He rolled his eyes. "And he _always_ caves to Mum. Which is precisely how I ended up with this disgusting concoction." He held up his tumbler. "Because Dad can't say no to Mum. No. Sap. He can't even be sneaky with his little boy and – oh, I dunno – sneak in a handful of jelly babies or chocolate."

Mel leaned down to give it a good sniff. "What is it?"

He eyeballed the tumbler closely. "Magnolia fruit blended with gavvilz, baby bloenn and some other things that are green and orange and red … and … not … purple." He stopped and let out a curious huff through his nose at the fact that the liquid in the tumbler was purple. "Well that's something to ponder, isn't it?"

"What's to ponder?" Melanie questioned with a smile as she dipped her finger into the icy, frothy liquid and then pulled it to her mouth to taste. "Oh, that's very good."

"Full of antioxidants and vitamins and holy life extending magical miracle enzymes that simply cannot exist inside of any foods that might actually taste any good," Gallifrey groused through a pout. He passed her the tumbler. "Go right ahead and take it. I was going to ask the TARDIS if she should help me jettison this stuff without Mum finding out, anyway."

Melanie drew back a long swig of the smoothie and let out a hum of pleasure as she let the flavours explode across her tongue. She licked at her tip lip to wipe away the froth. "I _have_ to get the recipe for this. It's absolutely divine." She grinned widely at the youngster as he looked to her with an expression that left little doubt that his mind was calling her an idiot. "Oh. You're just like your father. Complain and grip about doing anything healthy."

She pushed off the console with all the gusto of a woman who had found purpose. "Your _mother_. She and I need to have a discussion, I think."

"Why-y-y-y?" Gallifrey sang suspiciously.

"She can help me convince the Doctor that he should adopt a much more healthy lifestyle."

"Righ-h-h-h-t," Gallifrey breathed doubtfully. "Good luck with that."

"I won't need luck if I have your mother on my side," she teased in song. She folded her arm across her chest and lifted her chin with victory. "No more whinin' and complainin' about eating healthy and exercising."

At that, Gallifrey had to laugh. "Oh, you really don't know him all that well. Do you?"

Before Melanie could retort with a carefully chosen argument of her own, the console lit up with life. She jumped with the sudden shock and held her hand to her chest as static filled the TARDIS monitor.

"What's that?" Mel called out in a shrill voice of surprise. "What's happening?"

Gallifrey jogged forward and toggled a couple of small levers and dials on the main console. "Just a communication ping," he answered quickly. "Someone's looking to chat with Dad and are sending out feelers to see if he's responsive or not. Capsule to capsule if I'm not mistaken."

Mel shot him a worried look. "Pardon me?"

"Oh," he sang with a smile. "Communication pings have different coding depending on the originating communication request. A terran call from Gallifrey comes through on a different signal than an offworld call." He tipped his head from side to side as he confirmed and accepted the request. "As do calls from different ships. Do you hear the shrill rise and fall beeping within the static feed? That's indicative of another capsule – or TARDIS if you prefer – reaching out to this one."

Mel's eyes widened. "Oh. I see."

Gallifrey grinned. "Which means adventure may be afoot."

"Then perhaps we should wait for your father-?"

"Nah," Gallifrey shot in quickly. "He's getting food for a hungry toddler. Trust me when I say that there exists no greater danger in the entire universe than Tia needing to be fed." He looked down at the array of buttons and levers and flicked a tiny switch. "I'll take a message. Dad can get back to 'em."

They both looked up as a classically handsome figure in black robes slowly appeared on screen. Fine embroidery of what Gallifrey immediately recognized as the small blooms and silver leaves of the Cadonwood tree edged the neck of the man's robes, which indicated that this Lord held high stature on Gallifrey. Crystal blue eyes sat underneath dark angular brows that so perfectly matched the slicked-back hair and perfectly manicured goatee, that Gallifrey would've accused him of using dye to achieve that level of perfection, which should have made him instantly recognizable…

…but for the very life of him, Gallifrey couldn't place the Lord in question.

Caught by his own curiosity, Gallifrey didn't hear the hitch in Melanie's breath, nor the exhaled and panic whisper of his father's name. Instead, he leaned down onto his forearms and offered the newcomer a warm smile of greeting.

"Well. Hello!"

The image cast his eyes to the young boy and then looked toward Melanie. "We meet again, Melanie Bush. How delightful."

"I don't know that I'd say that," she chipped back indignantly. "The longer it is till we meet again, the better."

"Oh," he breathed with feigned disappointment. "You wound me with those words."

Gallifrey shifted his eyes toward Melanie, but he remained silent. Whoever this fellow was, Mel didn't trust him. Therefore, neither did he.

Melanie set her hand gently on Gallifrey's shoulder, but kept her eyes on the screen. "What do you want? We're a little busy right now."

He seemed nonplussed by the aggressive shrill in her voice as she spoke. His voice remained calm. Level. Even somewhat friendly.

"I'd like to have a word with the Doctor," he said with a smile. "Now do be a good little pet and _fetch_ him for me. We have some rather important things to discuss, the Doctor and I."

Mel tipped her head to one side, letting her mass of airy curls brush against Gallifrey's head. "I'm afraid that's quite impossible right now." She smiled an obviously fake smile. "He's very busy right now. I'm sure you understand how it is. But if you care to leave a message I can pass it along when he's got nothing better to do."

Gallifrey's eyes pinched and his brows slammed hard together. Obviously this man was what he might consider one of the unsavoury ones that's always going after his dad…

…Even though this guy was a Time Lord – which narrowed it down a bit - it was still a rather impressive list of people.

He lifted his eyes as the man made a demand for the Doctor once more.

"Sorry, but he's _busy_ ," Mel reiterated on a growl. "Try back again later." She rolled her eyes off to one side. "Or _never_ , the choice is yours."

"Busy doing what," he asked hotly. "What is the Doctor doing that is more Important than me; his _old friend_."

Well, that eliminated every single Time Lord excluding one. And unfortunately that _one_ wasn't considered a particularly nice person – by anyone. Gallifrey raised his head, rolled back his shoulders and stood as tall as an almost-eleven-year-old could.

"Regenerating," he answered simply. "Really, Koschei, is it necessary to behave like a demanding woman? I am in the midst of Regenerative illness right now and don't want or even need to hear this incessant whining."

Silence filled the console room with nothing but the quiet sound of the shifting rotor column to fill the void. For a very miniscule moment, Gallifrey questioned whether or not he should give up the game and just go get his dad. Oh, but why bother doing that? Once Tia was bathed, fed, and asleep the last thing his Dad would want to do is to verbally spar with the Master. He'd listened to Koschei and the Doctor face off together more times than he dared count, so he knew how to play the game well enough.

The façade on the monitor shifted curiously. The Master shifted closer as though analyzing the image a little more closely. "And you expect me to believe for a single moment that you have regenerated into a _child_?"

Gallifrey shrugged. "Well, when I have spent the better part of seven centuries being told I'm a child, what better form to regenerate into?" He opened his arms and gave a small twirl. "And didn't I become a very adorable one at that?"

"What kind of ham-fisted bun-vendor do you take me for?" the Master boomed out angrily. "A _child_? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you _allowed yourself_ to regenerate into a _child_?"

Gallifrey shrugged. "Better than regenerating into a Unicorn's fart like I did last time." He eyeballed the man on the screen and sniffed with disdain. He waved a bored hand toward the monitor and looked toward Melanie with disinterest in his gaze. "Or, better yet, a reincarnation of a Vincent Price matinee villain."

The Master's expression hardened with insult. "I see that your incessant impertinence has followed you into an incarnation that might be considered more appropriate for such juvenile behavior."

"And blah blah blah," Gallifrey sang out with a dismissive wave of his hand. "How many more _eloquent_ adjectives can you put into one sentence? Really. Any man who simply has to drone on and on with the most elaborate and fancy words in any language only proves one thing, old friend."

The Master narrows his eyes at the youngster. "And what's that?"

"Well," Gallifrey sang as he thrust both hands into his pockets and began a stalking pace very reminiscent of his father in his tenth incarnation. "Plenty, actually." He stopped to rub at his chin in a rather thoughtful manner. "I was once told by a professor of mine. History, he taught, actually. In a nice little academy – oh – so far away from where we stand right now."

"Oh do get on with it."

"Yes. Right," Gallifrey agreed with a firm expression as he rose to a stand and held his shoulders backward. He held that position for only a short moment before he fell into a lazy slouch – hands still deep inside his pockets. "Anyway, my professor – oh, let's call him _Mr. Smith_ shall we? – He said to me that it is a simple mind that rambles.."

"Rambling is the sole property of the Time Lord Doctor," the Master muttered with a grin through his goatee and a spark in his eye. "I do not, and will not, ever be caught rambling in the incoherent manner by which you do. I make sure to always speak in a concise and articulate manner as taught to us in the daily drudgery of the Academy."

Gallifrey lifted a finger and smiled around a swallow. "Which only stands to prove the point that I was initially trying to make…"

"Which," another voice across space and time spoke through the communication point. "If I recall correctly, young Gallifrey, was your assertion that a gifted, fertile and _brilliant_ mind is one that rambles though each and every available possibility." The Valeyard, in his ebony black robes decorated with a silver shoulder dress typical only to the Time Lords of Gallifrey, stepped into view. He smiled warmly with eyes of recognition and pride toward his youngster. "You claimed it was the mind of a simpleton that spoke in such a robotic and autonomous manner."

Gallifrey's mouth dried almost immediately and his jaw hung low. He slapped his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth in an attempt to find moisture. He swallowed guiltily. "Who-Who are you?"

The Valeyard tipped his head to one side in gentle chiding. "My precious Flubble. Don't you recognize me?"

Gallifrey's eyes were wide and he found himself stepping in toward Mel as though to find safety from the monster. He shook his head as he sent his mind back to the grounds of a 1913 English farm, where thirteen men called him _son_. This face wasn't among them.

"No," he breathed out worriedly. "No, I don't."

"Think hard," the Valeyard offered with a smile. "Feel for our bond, Gal. I know you can sense the truth."

Gallifrey swallowed thickly and closed his eyes to reach out across the familial bond that connected him and his father. His eyes shot open to see a fourteenth face hidden within those more familiar to him. He couldn't deny it. He absolutely couldn't dispel the reality that this man was an incarnation of the man who sired him. There was no way to fake a familial bond. Not even the greatest telepaths on Gallifrey could pull off that trick.

"Gallifrey?"

He blinked worriedly and looked up to the face that called for him in a tone of voice that suggested they hadn't met in years.

"D. Dad?"


End file.
